London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Scotland Yard today conceded it was wrong not to have conducted a review, but said an "interim review" had now been completed by the College of Policing.

Speaking to the BBC for its Panorama programme, which will be aired tonight, the Met's assistant commissioner Mark Rowley defended the force's failure to follow the recommendation.

He said: "Perhaps some formal paperwork and formal thinking should have been done at the time - it wasn't but we're constantly looking at the tactic.

"If anyone has a better idea on how you confront armed criminals in vehicles with a view to arresting them safely and seizing their weapons then we're up for better ideas. People say review, people don't come forward with better ideas."

The "hard stop" tactic is a pre-planned operation which involves armed officers deliberately intercepting a vehicle to confront suspects.

Mr Duggan was shot by a Scotland Yard marksman after armed officers stopped the taxi in which he was travelling in Tottenham, north London in August 2011, sparking riots across England.

Police believed he planned to collect a gun from another man, Kevin Hutchinson-Foster, and then go on to Broadwater Farm, also in Tottenham.

An inquest jury early this month found he was lawfully killed by a police marksman despite being unarmed when he was shot.

At the culmination of the four-month inquest, the jury found that although the 29-year-old had a gun in the minicab, he most likely threw it on to a nearby grass verge as soon as the car came to a stop.

Mr Duggan's family claimed he was "executed" and branded the judgment "perverse", and his aunt Carole has called for a new IPCC investigation into his death.

Last week it was announced that Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, will be charged with a health and safety breach after unarmed Anthony Grainger was shot dead in March 2012 in a pre-planned operation.

The officer who shot him will face not action.

Following the shooting of Mr Rodney in 2005 in another "hard stop" incident, an IPCC report made five significant operational recommendations to the Met, particularly to review the "hard stop" tactic.

But no significant changes to the tactic had been made by the time of Mr Duggan's death in 2011, the BBC claimed.

IPCC deputy chairwoman Deborah Glass told the BBC: "I think moral persuasion is an extremely powerful sanction and the questions will be asked.... if we have to make a recommendation twice, then I think there is a legitimate question to be said... why don't you make, give, effect this the first time round?"

She also said: "It is not for the IPCC to enforce recommendations."

In a statement the Met said its specialist firearms officers are called to more than 11,000 incidents a year, of which 3,000 are firearms incidents.

It said that 1,200 pre-planned firearms operations are run across the force, and yet officers only fire shots once or twice a year.

Armed criminals have killed more than 50 people in London in the past three-and-a-half years, the Met said, while of the eight people killed in pre-planned operations in the last decade, only two have followed the "hard stop" tactic.

A spokesman said: "It was wrong not to formally review the tactic in 2005 following the IPCC recommendation. This is a national tactic to which we subscribe.

"However, following the result of the Azelle Rodney inquiry, an interim review has been completed by the College of Policing and the MPS will now work with the College and the national lead to see if there are any alternative or better tactics available in Europe or the rest of the world."

He added: "Firearms operations against the most dangerous and determined armed criminals are of course not straightforward... Criticising those who have the responsibility for running such challenging operations is easy.

"We welcome better ideas and are currently researching internationally to see if other forces have alternative tactics."

Two officers from the firearms unit that killed Mr Duggan - who were not involved in his shooting but have killed other armed suspects before - told BBC's Panorama they would kill again if they though their colleagues were about to die.

One officer said if the situation was exactly the same he would do so again, saying: "It's extremely difficult, especially when you think that you're doing the right thing and you're being trained to do something to protect the public and protect your colleagues... you then face the potential of prosecution."